CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
an old man’s request
AN OLD MAN’S REQUEST
II
got gotto tothe thephone phone on on the the second second ring. I could hear the scratchy connectioneven evenbefore beforethe thevoice voicespoke. spoke. connection “Is this Nerburn?” It was a woman. I recognized the clipped tones of an Indian accent. “Yes,” I responded. “You don’t know me,” she continued, without even giving a name. “My grandpa wants to talk to you. He saw those ‘Red Road’ books you did.” I felt a tightening in my chest. Several years before I had worked with students on the Red Lake Ojibwe reservation collecting the memories of the students’ parents and grandparents. The two books that had resulted, To Walk the Red Road and We 99
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Choose to Remember, had gained some notoriety in the Indian community across North America. Most of the Indians had loved them for the history they had captured. But some found old wounds opened, or familial feuds rekindled. Occasionally, I would receive phone calls from people who wanted to challenge something we had written or to set the record straight on something their grandfather or grandmother was supposed to have said. “Sure,” I answered. “Let me talk to him.” “He doesn’t like to talk on the phone,” the woman said. I had grown accustomed to Indian reticence about talking to white people, and I knew there were still a few of the very traditional elders who didn’t like to use the telephone or have their picture taken. “Is he upset?” I ventured. “He just wants to talk to you.” My nervousness was growing. “Where is he?” She told me the name of a reservation. It was a long way from my home. “What does he want?” “Could you come and see him?” The request took me aback. It was a strange request on any terms, coming as it did from someone I didn’t even know. But the distance involved made it even stranger. “I guess it’s important for me to know if he’s angry,” I said. The woman betrayed no emotion. “He’s not angry. He just saw those books and he wants to talk to you.” I rubbed my eyes and thought of the travel. When I had left the oral history project I had made a silent promise that I would keep using such skills as I had for the good of the Indian people. I had never enjoyed a people so much and had never found such a joyful sense of humor and lack of pretension. But more than that, I had felt a sense of peace and simplicity among the
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Indians that transcended the stereotypes of either drunkenness or wisdom. They were simply the most grounded people I had ever met, in both the good and bad senses of that word. They were different from white people, different from black people, different from the images that I had been taught, different from anything I had ever encountered. I felt happy among them, and I felt honored to be there. Sometimes I would stand on the land in Red Lake and think to myself, “This land has never been owned by the United States. This land has never been touched by the movement of European civilization.” It was as if I were feeling a direct link to something elemental, something beneath the flow of history, and it was powerful beyond imagining. Though I was a white man, and all too aware of the effects of well-intentioned white people on the well-being of the Indian people, I wanted, from within my world, to help them retain the goodness in theirs. Now, a voice had come to me from a place far away, asking me to come back to that world and hear what an old man had to say. “I’ll come,” I said, half hating myself for my hesitancy, half hating myself for agreeing at all. “It won’t be right away, though.” “He’s pretty old,” she responded. “Soon,” I said. “Just ask at the store in town. He doesn’t go anywhere much. He really wants to talk to you.” She gave me his name and hung up. And so this book began. ¬¬¬¬
II
wasseveral several months months before before II could could make make the the trip. trip. I packed a ttwas few few clothes clothes in in the the truck truck and and made made my my way way across the bleak
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landscape of America’s northern tier. Scrub pines gave way to fields. Morning mist rose over rolling prairies. Small towns, signaled in the distance by towering grain elevators or church steeples, shot by on the side of the highway, unnoticed, unvisited, undisturbed. The radio came in and out, offering moments of rock or classical music before disappearing into static. I switched from FM to AM. Farm reports, local ads for hardware stores, specials on rakes and fertilizer and feed. I checked the map and marked my progress. The reservations were defined only by slightly off-color squares surrounded by dotted lines. I tried to imagine an America seen from within these tiny islands in a sea of invading cities and farms. I thought of how a mild sense of discomfort overcame me whenever I crossed one of these borders into a reservation, and how I felt vaguely alien, unwanted, even threatened. How must it be for the Indians themselves, traveling across great expanses of country, feeling that same threat and alienation until they could reach the protective confines of one of the tiny off-color squares that were so few and separated on the vast map of our country? I arrived on the old man’s reservation shortly after dark. The clerk at the local store was a heavyset Indian girl. She eyed me suspiciously when I gave her the name. Three young boys who were standing at the video rack stopped talking and watched me quietly. “Over there,” she said, pointing toward the west. “He lives about three miles out. It’s kind of hard to find.” I assured her that I was good at directions. She drew a tiny map on the back of a napkin. It was full of turns and cutbacks and natural landmarks like creekbeds and fallen trees. I thanked her, bought a pack of Prince Albert tobacco, and set out. Her map was good, better than I had expected. I soon
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found myself bouncing up a rutted path with weeds growing in its middle. The headlights formed a vague halo in the darkness. The eyes of small animals would gleam for a second on the side of the road, then disappear as shadowy forms made their way into the underbrush. The road made a quick turn, then opened into a clearing. My headlights were shining directly onto a small clapboard house. Two cars sat outside. One was up on blocks. Three wooden steps made their way up to the front door. An old, low-bellied dog lay on the top stoop. When I opened the car door she came running toward me, barking and wagging her tail. The front door opened and a figure emerged, silhouetted against the light inside the house. “I’m Nerburn,” I said. “Yeah. Come on in,” came the reply, as if he had been expecting me. The voice was old but warm. Suddenly I felt more at ease. There was that Indian sense of humor and grace — almost a twinkle — in its tone. The dog continued barking. “Get away, Fatback,” the old man yelled. The dog fell silent and scrabbled her way under the car that was sitting on blocks. “Damn thing. Just showed up here one day. Now she thinks she owns the place.” The old man turned and walked back inside. He was slow and deliberate, hardly lifting his feet as he walked. I made my way up the steps and into the door. The matter-of-fact way he accepted my arrival had me confused. The house was full of man smell. Fried food. Stale cigarettes. Old coffee. Dishes stood in the sink. One wall was covered with photographs — a s-vintage sepiatone of a young man and woman standing in front of an old car; a department-store posing of a little girl in a taffeta party dress; a graduation photo
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of a solemn young man in a mortarboard. An old Life magazine photograph of John F. Kennedy stood framed on an end table. “Sit down,” the old man said. He beckoned to a yellow Formica table that stood in the middle of the kitchen. “Do you drink coffee?” I told him I did. “Good,” he answered, and poured me a cup of thin brown liquid from a white enamel pot he kept on the stove. Then he padded over and slid into a seat across from me. He must have been almost eighty. His face was seamed and rutted, and his long grey hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He had on a plaid flannel shirt over a white T-shirt. His pants were held up by suspenders and he wore sheepskin-lined slippers. One eye was clouded over, but there was a twinkle in his look that matched the twinkle in his voice. I reached into my pocket and handed him the Prince Albert. My days in Red Lake had taught me that the gift of tobacco was the gift of respect among Indian people. The old man looked at it. “Hmm,” he said. He reached across the table with a hand twisted by arthritis. He took the packet and shoved it into the breast pocket of his shirt. “You wrote those ‘Red Road’ books.” “I helped the kids.” He folded up the newspaper on the table. To Walk the Red Road lay underneath, as if it, too, had been awaiting my arrival. Small notations were written all over its cover. “They’re pretty good.” “We tried our best.” He spit once into a coffee can he kept by his chair. “I don’t like white people much,” he said. He was looking straight at me. “That’s understandable.” “Did they?”
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“Who?” “The old folks at Red Lake.” “Not all of them.” He picked up a can of snuff from the table and slid some behind his lip. “What about you?” “You mean, did they like me?” He didn’t answer. “I think so. Some didn’t. They thought I was a pushy white guy. But what could I do?” “You did okay.” He tapped the cover of To Walk the Red Road. “Now, let me ask you something else. Do you know why they let you?” I smiled a bit and took a sip of my coffee. “I think so. I think it’s because I like people and they could tell that. That I wasn’t going to screw them. That the kids thought I was okay so they decided to trust me.” “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “There’s something else. You don’t try to be an Indian.” I smiled at the compliment and let him continue. He was clearly a man who formed judgments quickly. “White people that come around to work with Indians, most of them want to be Indians. They’re always wearing Indian jewelry and talking about the Great Spirit and are all full of bullshit.” “Yeah, I know the type,” I said. He peered around the side of my head. “You got no ponytail. That’s good. You don’t have any turquoise rings on, do you?” I held up my hands. They had no rings, no watch. “Good,” he said wryly. He picked up his train of thought. “Or else they think we need some kind of white social worker telling us what to do. Some of them come here because they can’t find a job anywhere
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else and end up out on the reservation. We got them here, all of them.” I nodded my head. He leaned over as if to tell me a secret. “You aren’t like that, are you?” he asked. There was a kind of conspiratorial hush in his voice. I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a joke. “I try not to be. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like Indian people.” “That’s okay. It’s good that you like Indian people. I like them too. But how much do you like white people?” The question seemed strange. “I’m not much thrilled with the culture we’ve created.” “Yeah, okay. But how about white people?” I didn’t know what he was driving at. “I like white people just fine,” I said. “I mean, after all, I am one.” “That’s what I mean,” he chuckled. “That’s good. That’s good. If you hate your own people you can’t be a very good person. You have to love your own people even if you hate what they do.” He gestured toward the mug on the table. “Here. Drink your coffee.” I took a gulp to placate him. It tasted like something brewed from twigs and rubber tires. “No, I don’t hate white people,” I said. “Sometimes I’m embarrassed by us. But white people are okay.” He waved his gnarled hand for silence. He was done toying with me. He fixed me with a solid stare. I was suddenly intensely aware of my whiteness and my relative youth. I wanted to know what this was all about, but I had learned through hard experience that Indians make their own choices and take their own time. The old man would come to the point when he wanted to.
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He pointed to a picture on the wall. “That’s my grandson,” he said. “When he graduated from Haskell.” Haskell is an Indian junior college in Kansas. The people I knew who had gone there looked upon it with a great sense of pride. “Did he like it?” “He’s dead now,” the old man answered. “Got killed.” “He was a good-looking boy,” I offered, unsure of what else to say. “Yes. He drank too much. Would have been about your age.” He fixed me again with that hard stare. “I want you to help me write a book.” The abruptness of the request left me speechless. “I’m seventy-eight,” he continued. “This is a hard life. I want to get all this down.” “All what?” I asked. “What I have in my mind.” I thought he wanted me to write his memoirs. “You mean, like your memories?” “No. What I have in my mind. I watch people. Indian people and white people. I see things. I want you to help me write it down right.” He got up and went into his bedroom. When he came out he had a sheaf of loose-leaf papers in his hand. “I’ve been writing some things down. My granddaughter said I should do something with them.” I was shocked and excited and nervous. I didn’t know whether I wanted to see the pages or not. The old man might be a crackpot full of wild religious theories. But there was always the chance that he was one of those rare chroniclers of life who had managed to catch the living, breathing sense of the times he had lived through. He handed me the pile of papers. “Read them,” he said.
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After two pages I knew that I was in the presence of someone extraordinary. The old man was neither the crackpot I had feared nor the chronicler I had hoped. He was a thinker, pure and simple, who had looked long and hard at the world around him. His work wasn’t polished. It wasn’t even finished. Pages were filled with disconnected observations and long unpunctuated paragraphs. Thoughts were scrawled on hunks of napkins and the backs of envelopes. But beneath the fragmentary disorder lay a level of insight that was as deep and as clear as a mountain lake. “I’d be honored to help you with this,” I said. “Good. I want it all fixed. I want things to sound right.” “It sounds good now,” I told him. “No, not the way I want. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. There are things you white people need to hear. I want them to sound good so people don’t say, ‘Oh, that’s just an old Indian talking.’” “Well,” I laughed, “You are an old Indian talking.” Instantly I could feel I had made a mistake. He turned and looked away from me. Without looking back at me he spoke very slowly. “White people have always tried to make us into animals. They want us to be like animals in a zoo. If I don’t sound good, like a white person thinks sounds good, you just make me into another animal in the zoo.” He got up and walked to the sink. He kept his back toward me. “I’m tired now. I’m going to bed.” My cheeks burned. I knew I had offended him. Once more I had been a white person who had talked before I had thought. But I had seen enough of his writing to believe that it was more important than my feelings, or even his. I tried one more time. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I hope I didn’t offend you.”
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“I’m going to bed,” he said without turning around. He padded into the bedroom and shut the door. I sat there in silence, listening to the erratic buzzing of the fluorescent light over my head. I didn’t know what to do. I thought of writing him a note, but that seemed stupid. I got up and turned off some of the lights. Then I put the tattered pages of the old man’s writing under my arm, and went out the door. ¬¬¬¬
II
gotalmost almostnonosleep sleepthat that night. motel lumpy got night. TheThe motel bedbed was was lumpy and the roaring by onby theonhighway outsideoutside shook shook the walls. andtrucks the trucks roaring the highway the But was my ownmyanguish that kept mekept awake. walls.it But it was own anguish that me awake. I had never before done anything like taking those pages. The old man hadn’t offered them to me. It was a gift for him to even show them to me. Then I had gone and stolen them. I felt like the worst white man who had ever lived, gaining the trust of an Indian then using it to my advantage. But I kept telling myself there was more to my action than that. I wanted to show the old man that I could be trusted, and the only way I could do it was to take a chance on his trust. All night I pored over the writing. I rearranged paragraphs and corrected grammar. I tried to link up themes and organize chapters around ideas. Then I tried to write it in a way that sounded like the old man’s voice. By : I had created one chapter that felt right. I wrote it out in longhand and fell asleep just as the sun was beginning to color the edges of the curtains. I awoke around :. I was afraid the old man would be up and find the manuscript gone. I washed and got dressed and made my way out to the house without stopping to eat. There was another car parked next to the house. I waited by my car until someone came to the door. It was
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a younger woman — the old man’s granddaughter. She gestured me in. I went up the steps and found the old man sitting at the table. He was eating oatmeal and bacon. I immediately put the tattered pages down beside him. He didn’t look at me. “I tried to make a chapter sound like he might want it to,” I said to the woman. With every fiber of my being I wanted to keep talking — to explain myself and justify myself. Most of all I wanted some kind of response from them. But I knew I had to keep quiet. “Read it, Wenonah,” the old man said. I sat there in silence while she read my words in her soft, lilting voice. They sounded stilted to me — not good at all. When she had finished the old man tapped the table with his crippled finger. “Have some coffee,” he said. I could barely suppress a smile. I knew I had passed some kind of test, but I didn’t know how or why. She poured me a cup from the big enamel pot. “That’s what I wanted you to do,” he said. “Make it sound like that. Make it sound like I graduated from Haskell.”
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CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER TWO
burnt offerings
BURNT OFFERINGS
II
ttwas wasseveral several months months before before II was was able able to make the drive back out to the old man’s reservation. I out to the old man’s reservation. had gone home with a pile of tattered notebook sheets and several shoe boxes of notes scribbled on everything from napkins to cash register slips. One of the boxes had contained a selection of clippings from newspapers that the old man had collected over the years. Some of them were obituaries of friends. Others were articles on subjects ranging from Indian affairs to politics. There were several Ann Landers columns and a few advertisements. I had been unable to discern any pattern to them, or to divine any reason why he had chosen to collect them in a shoe box, much less to send with me. me. them home with But I had not asked questions. 21 21
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In the months that had passed I had spent many hours laying out pieces of paper and cobbling phrases and notations together into thematic unities. As I drove up the pathway to his house, I was excited but apprehensive. I had crafted a few good chapters, or so I thought. But still, it seemed artificial and vaguely unsatisfying, as if it were more my work than his. I was anxious to see how he would receive it. Fatback was lying in her usual place on the stoop. She barked once, then scuttled off into the dirt hollow she had dug beneath the junk car. I could hear laughing inside the house. Soon the old man appeared at the door. He gestured me in with a flap of his wrist. “Haven’t been around for a while,” was all he said. For all his surprise and sense of ceremony, I might have been gone only fifteen minutes. Three men were sitting around a table, playing cards. They were all old, but none so old as the old man himself. The house was filled with cigarette smoke. The TV was blaring in the corner. One of the men looked up and said, “Who’s that? Grizzly Adams?” It was said with good humor and directed at the old man, as if he, not I, were responsible for explaining my presence. The other men laughed a bit and nodded, then turned back to their cards. Other than that, no one paid any attention to me. The old man didn’t introduce me or offer me a place to sit. One of the men threw three cards on the table. “Son of a bitch,” said another, and they all burst into laughter. I had my packet of Prince Albert to offer the old man, but it seemed strange and inappropriate. I stood silently, holding my computer printouts and listening to the buzz of the fluorescent light over my head.
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“Wasichu play cards?” one of the men said to the old man. I recognized the Lakota term for “white man.” “Don’t know,” he answered. He pointed toward me with the ash of his cigarette. “Hey, Nerburn. You play cards?” “No,” I answered. “I never really learned.” One of the men grunted. I was no longer significant. He began dealing a new hand while I stood awkwardly in the doorway, disregarded and forgotten. Suddenly, as if he had been waiting, the old man said, “Well, read one.” The others kept talking among themselves and smoking cigarettes. “Now?” I said. “Hell, yes. I might not make it until tomorrow.” There was a general round of laughter. I wanted to leave. I stepped further into the room and started paging through the neatly stapled packets, trying to find one in which I had confidence. “Just pick one. It don’t matter,” said the old man. I grabbed the one sitting on the top. It was one of the most beautiful, I thought, and it was the one that had come to me most fully crafted. Unlike the others, this one had been meticulously printed in ballpoint pen and sealed into a separate envelope. I was not even sure he had written it alone. I had improved the grammar and changed a few words. But the phrasing, the cadences, and the thoughts were exactly as I had received them. I cleared my throat like a schoolboy and began: Hello, my friends. I am going to speak to you now. I have thought about this for many years. I have always tried to follow the ways of my grandfathers. In my ears I have heard the words of Sitting
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Bull, telling me that white people are not to be trusted. But I have also heard the words of Black Kettle, who told us to reach out a hand of peace. I have carried them both in my heart. Now that I am old I have decided to speak. There are many of my people who would have me keep silent. They feel we must continue to hide ourselves from the white man. They say that every time we have offered our hand we have been destroyed. But there is no more place to hide. The white man controls the air we breathe and the water we drink. He comes among us for good and for ill. Our numbers are small, but we are strong in heart. We must meet together, red people and white, one final time before it is too late. Perhaps our strong hearts will be heard this time. If they are not, what does it matter? Then our time is done either way. I choose to believe otherwise. The Creator did not put our people here to be destroyed and forgotten. We are part of the great circle of creation. The voice of our people needs to be heard. If I remain silent, our voice is silenced by one. So I choose to speak. If at times my words seem angry, you must forgive me. In my mind, there is great anger. No one who has seen the suffering of our children and the tears of our grandmothers cannot be angry. But in my heart I struggle to forgive, because the land is my teacher, and the land says to forgive. If the mountain can forgive the scarring and the mining, and can cover over her gashes with the fresh grasses of summer, should I not, too, be able to cover over the gashes with the fresh grasses of kindness and understanding?
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If the forest can survive the murder of all her children, and rise again once more in beauty, should I not, too, be able to survive the murder of my people and once again raise my heart toward the sun? It is not easy for a man to be as great as a mountain or a forest. But that is why the Creator gave them to us as teachers. Now that I am old I look once more toward them for lessons, instead of trying to understand the ways of men. They tell me to be patient. They tell me I cannot change what is, I can only hope to change what will become. Let the grasses grow over our scars, they say, and let the flowers bloom over our wounds. If I have spoken too much, or spoken wrongly, may others speak out to make it right. If I have spoken truly, may others hear the words and take them to their hearts. I am only a man. I was not given a seat at the head of my people and I was not raised up to speak for them. I say these things because I believe they must be said. Others may come who can say them better. When they do, I will stand aside. But I am old, and I cannot wait. I have chosen to speak. I will be silent no more. When I was done, one of the others looked at the old man. “Did you write that, Dan?” The old man was impassive. “That one’s okay,” he said. “What the hell you doing?” the man with the cards said. “Just making some little talks.” “Jesus. You making a book?” One of the other men spoke up. “I think it’s damn good.” The third man had remained silent. “I don’t know,” he said.
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As if on some inaudible cue, he got up to leave. The other two stood up, also. “Don’t forget the card up your sleeve,” the old man said. The others laughed and filed out the door. “Did I do something wrong?” I asked. The old man took out a cigarette. “Nah. They just decided to go home. Let me hear that one you just read me again.” I reread the chapter. It sounded strange and stilted in a room full of playing cards and cigarette smoke. The old man could see my puzzlement. “You white boys don’t understand,” he said. “Come back tomorrow morning and I’ll show you something.” He spit something into the coffee can by his chair. “Be sure to bring some tobacco.” ¬¬¬¬
MM
orning dawned wetheavy and air. heavy air. Mosquitoes orning dawned withwith a wetaand Mosquitoes buzzed buzzed againstand theascreen and rose a foggy rose from against the screen foggy haze fromhaze the fields outside the motel Somewhere nearby a semi sat aidling the fields outsidewindow. the motel window. Somewhere nearby semi with its refrigeration unit on. The lowon. diesel pulsed and sat idling with its refrigeration unit Therumble low diesel rumble droned against the motel wall. pulsed and droned against the motel wall. The enigmatic nature of the old man’s response had set me on edge. It was a long drive and an expensive trip to come out and visit him. I wanted some greater sense of purpose out of these encounters — a thank-you, a level of excitement and anticipation, anything. But all I was getting were nods and grunts and people coming and going with no discernible purpose. “Stay calm,” I told myself. I remembered what a man I respected, a tribal leader of the local Ojibwe, had said when asked about Indian time. “You know what Indian time means?” he had responded in a session with local college students. “It means, ‘When I’m damn good and ready.’”
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The old man was operating on Indian time. I was still operating on a clock and a paycheck. I showered quickly and pulled on a pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt. I had driven out in my sandals, but they seemed embarrassingly citified. I took the old pair of workboots out of my duffel bag and slipped them on over some grey cotton socks. I took a quick glance in the mirror. With my blond hair and rapidly greying beard, I guess I could easily be seen as looking like Grizzly Adams to an old Indian. There were worse things they could have called me. The old man was waiting when I arrived. Once again, his granddaughter was cooking him breakfast. I began to wonder if this was a daily ritual, and where she emerged from every morning. She was frying smoky strips of bacon on an old cast-iron griddle, then pouring the bacon grease into a big pot of oatmeal. “You hungry, Nerburn?” she asked, stirring the grease into the oatmeal with a large metal spoon. Her familiarity took me aback, almost as much as the breakfast she was concocting. “A couple of strips of bacon and a cup of coffee would be great,” I said. I remembered her brew; it had at least shown some promise. It was more twigs and less tire than the old man’s. And I was willing to endure anything to avoid the mephitic gruel she was brewing up on the stove. The old man tapped the table with his arthritic finger. “Did you bring the tobacco?” I nodded. “I had it along last night, but it didn’t seem like the right time to give it to you.” “Suit yourself,” he said. His granddaughter glanced over at me out of the corner of her eye, but turned her gaze away when I saw her looking. Soon another car came rumbling up the driveway. Fatback raced out from her hollow and started barking.
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“Aw, shut the hell up,” came a voice from outside. Three car doors slammed and I heard footsteps clomping up the wooden steps. The screen door opened and the three card players from the previous night came in. They nodded to me, and pulled up chairs. One of them wandered over to the old man’s granddaughter and put his arm around her. “You can cook my bacon anytime,” he cackled. Wenonah gave him a playful push. “You got no bacon left to cook, Grover,” she said. The others roared with laughter. Grover came over and sat down at the table. I had not paid much attention to him the night before, except to notice that he was the one who had seemed to take offense at what I had written. He was probably in his late fifties and had the wiry body of a one-time athlete or street tough. He wore a pair of jeans, cowboy boots, and a sparkling white T-shirt that looked as if it had just come from a laundry. The sleeves had been carefully rolled up to reveal an eagle tattoo on his right bicep. He wore his hair in a crewcut that was the color of cigarette ash. I had the distinct sense that he had been in the Navy once; he had the rolling gait and personal carriage of a sailor. Wenonah brought me the bacon and a tin cup full of coffee. “Treating this white boy pretty good, Wenonah,” Grover said. “He’s not an old goat like you.” Grover bleated several times and let out a hearty laugh. “I suppose you want to eat, too,” she said to the men. “Nerburn here’s got something for you,” the old man interrupted. He glanced at me and gestured with his eyes toward my pocket. I fumbled quickly and pulled out the tobacco. “Here,” I said, offering it to Grover. “Mr. . . .” I didn’t know how to refer to the old man. I knew his name was Dan, but that seemed too intimate. I settled for avoidance. “I was asked to come out here to help with this book. I consider it
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a great honor and I want to do it right. I would consider it a great honor if you would help me, too.” The men sat silent, impassive. No one said anything for what seemed like minutes. The whole mood in the room had changed. Finally, Grover took the packet of Prince Albert. “If Dan wants my help I will give it.” The others nodded too. Wenonah kept her back to us and said nothing. Grover had taken on a look of seriousness. He stared at the floor as if in contemplation. Then he got up and went out the front door. The old man mopped at the dregs of his oatmeal with a piece of limp toast. The other two men sat on a torn floral couch against the wall. The silence seemed to bother no one but me. Grover said something through the screen door that I did not understand. The old man answered him in the same language, then got up and went outdoors. Wenonah dropped two pieces of toast onto my plate. “You’d better eat,” she said quietly. One of the men on the couch got up and turned on the television. An insistent announcer’s voice was describing the benefits of some dishwashing detergent. Outside the screen door I could hear Grover and the old man talking in Lakota. I could tell nothing about the nature of the conversation from the tone of their voices. The screen door slammed abruptly behind me. The old man came over to the table and gestured me outside with a turn of his head. “Grover thinks it’s too white,” he said. “The way you wrote it.” I looked at him, puzzled. “They’re your words. I just scrubbed them up a little.” He gestured me forward with that strange pawing motion I had noticed before. “Come on out.”
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Grover was sitting on the stoop with his elbows on his knees. His hands were cupped around a cigarette to keep it from burning too fast in the wind. He was staring straight ahead, away from me. “Something ain’t right,” he said, still looking straight ahead. My cheeks flushed a bit. “You mean it sounds wrong?” “Naw, not exactly. It sounds alright. But it just don’t sound real. It sounds too much like movie Indians.” “I’m not sure what you mean.” Grover shifted on the stoop. He looked over at the old man. “You remember that New York woman?” Dan broke into a loud laugh. “I sure as hell do. You damn near scared her to death with all that coughing of yours.” “Tell Nerburn the story.” Again, their presumed familiarity with me took me aback. Dan sat down on an old car seat that was propped up next to the stoop. “There was a woman that came out from New York one time. She was writing a movie about some white man who did something good for the Indians — I don’t remember his name. She wanted to talk to Indians so she could see how we talked. “She was all dressed up in new jeans and cowboy boots and had a bandana around her neck. She looked like she was going on a safari. I think her clothes cost more than my car. It was just funny to see her. She had to look at everything before she sat down or walked or anything. She was more worried about getting dirty than any-thing else. “A couple of us said we’d talk to her. I guess we thought maybe we might make a few bucks or something. Besides, we wanted to know what she was all about. You know, there’s a lot of people coming looking for Indians since that ‘Dances with Wolves’ movie. “Anyway, I had some books with me. I had one of your ‘Red
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Road’ books and some other books that tribes have done where people tell stories. I thought maybe they would help her. “She tried to ask us questions, but I could see that the other fellows didn’t like her. So they didn’t say anything. They just sat there and watched her get nervous. It was pretty funny. “I let her read those books I had. She looked at them real quick. Then she said that they weren’t any help because the people sounded ‘flat and uninteresting.’ That’s what she said. I remember those words. She said that they sounded ‘flat and uninteresting.’ “Those were real people’s voices written down. But they weren’t good enough for her. They didn’t sound like how she wanted Indians to sound. She didn’t give a damn how Indians really sound. She just wanted to have us sound the way she thought we should sound. “I told her maybe there were some Indians in Greenwich Village who sounded better. She didn’t know if I was serious or not, so I kept on telling her how maybe New York Indians sounded better because they had been part of that Iroquois Confederation and had been a lot more used to giving speeches. “She wrote it all down and went away. I think she was really glad to go. Grover here kept clearing his throat all the time and she kept thinking maybe he was going to spit or something. The more nervous she got the more he cleared his throat. Got so rattly in there I thought he was going to drown. I damn near split in half trying to keep from laughing.” Grover was nodding his head silently. His cigarette ash was almost an inch long. “That’s the way it is, Nerburn,” he said. “White people don’t want real Indians, they want storybook Indians.” I was embarrassed and hurt. “I hope I didn’t make . . .” I paused again, confronted by the need to use his name. But the old man came to my rescue. “Hell, call me whatever
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you want. My name’s Dan, but lots of people just call me the old man, or grandpa. I don’t care.” “Okay,” I continued, turning to him. “I hope I didn’t make you sound like a storybook Indian. But you told me to make you sound like you went to Haskell.” The old man smiled. He wanted me to know that what I had done was fine. But Grover still had something on his mind. “Here’s the problem,” Grover said, directing his attention toward me. “That thing you wrote was okay. . .” “I think it’s pretty damn good,” Dan interrupted. “Yeah, it is,” Grover said. “It’s too damn good. You should send it to that New York woman.” I was watching the old man closely. Even with my own minimal involvement I was feeling attacked and wanted to defend what I thought was a beautiful passage. But the old man just sat back with a bemused look on his face and drew heavily on his cigarette. “Here’s what I think,” Grover continued. “That speech is good. But it’s dangerous as hell.” “Dangerous?” I said. “Yeah. Let me ask you something. What am I doing?” “You mean, what are you trying to tell me?” He shook his head like a frustrated school teacher. “No, no. I mean, what am I doing? What am I doing right now?” He held his cigarette toward me, a clue for the slow-witted. “You’re smoking a cigarette.” “Right. Now, what’s this cigarette made out of ?” “Tobacco.” “Okay. You know how we talk about tobacco being sacred, right? You just gave me tobacco, right? So, is this cigarette sacred?” Dan was grinning. He sensed where Grover was going. I was completely confused.
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“I don’t know,” I said. Grover took the short white butt from his mouth and crushed it theatrically on the stoop. “Nope. It’s just a casual smoke.” He reached into his breast pocket and took out the packet of Prince Albert I had given him. “Now, this is sacred, because you gave it to me sacred. Do you follow me?” I smiled weakly. He continued. “Sometimes things are sacred and sometimes they’re not. It’s not sacred when the guy at the store hands me a pack of cigarettes because he’s just handing me a pack of cigarettes. Do you see? But when you hand me that tobacco, you’re making it sacred because you’re offering it to me.” “Okay,” I said. The purpose of the discussion still eluded me. “But it’s still tobacco, am I right?” “Yes,” I said, thankful for a question to which I knew the answer. “It’s the same with Indians,” Grover stated, as if the connection were obvious. “Sometimes we’re sacred, sometimes we’re not. But we’re always Indians. If you write only the sacred stuff, it’s like that New York woman. Just write it all. The old man will try to trick you, but you’ve got to be smart.” Dan was enjoying himself immensely. He puffed on his cigarette and emitted a series of little “heh, heh’s” as Grover talked. “So what are you saying?” I asked, truly confused. “Look over here,” Grover directed. “Look at old Fatback there. Watch her close.” Fatback was snuffling in the brown fieldgrass. She sneezed several times, yawned, scratched herself, urinated on a bush, dug violently on a patch of dirt, then turned around several times and laid down. “What did you see?” Grover asked. I told him. “Did it all make sense?”
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“It was all dog stuff.” “But if you were writing a story about dogs, you’d put all that in.” “Sure. As much as was necessary.” “Well, you’re writing a story about Indians. But you’re writing like a white guy. You want everything all neat. Put it all in. Just write it the way it is.” I turned to Dan. He was digging at the ground with a stick. Grover spoke again. He wanted to emphasize his point. “This old man’s seen a lot. You ought to write everything, not just like speeches.” I had a sense of what he was driving at. But I was beginning to get angry and frustrated. I had done what the old man had asked, and I had done it well. I had done it with no promise of reward and not even a thank-you. Dan had seemed satisfied. But now he was sitting silent, letting Grover tell me it was all wrong. I was beginning to feel like I had felt so many times before working with Indians. Nothing you ever did was enough. Nothing was ever acknowledged. You just worked and worked until someone perceived some slight or some wrong in what you did, then you were shown the door. A burr of indignation rose up inside me. This time I was not going to be shown the door. If the time came, I was going to walk through it myself. Dan raised his hand slowly. It was a deliberate gesture, calling attention to his desire to speak. He chose his words carefully. “I’ve been listening here,” he said. “You’re right, Grover. It’s the white man’s way to try and make everything neat. I guess I wanted a white man’s book.” Grover was gratified. His point had been taken. “You do it all like that thing Nerburn read,” he said, “and it’s going to be like that New York woman’s clothes — all ironed and neat.” Then, to me, he counseled, “You can’t be afraid to get things dirty.”
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Dan sat hunched over in thought. He bit on the edge of his cigarette and spit out several strands of auburn tobacco. “Yeah,” he said slowly. His thoughts were still forming. “I guess we should do it the Indian way.” I didn’t know what “the Indian way” was. It sounded ominously unformed, and I had invested a great many hours in the shoe box and its contents. I started to protest. Dan silenced me. He turned and began walking slowly up the steps. “Listen to Grover,” he said. Grover picked up the cue. “Forget the speeches,” he said. “You’ll get speeches. The old man is always giving speeches. Has been ever since I’ve known him. Get the rest of it.” He stopped on the top step and spit once into the dust. “Think about Fatback.” He nodded his head toward the dog and grinned. Fatback kicked twice in the throes of some dog dream, let out a blubbery wheeze, and settled contentedly into her hollow of dirt. “That’s how you should write it,” he said. “Just tell the story.” ¬¬¬¬
II
tt took took me me aa while while to to get get over over my my anger at Grover’s airy dismissal missal of of my my literary literary method. method. II had had worked too hard, too long, to take it in stride. Still, Dan, who had spent years collectcollect ing ing those shoe boxes full of thought fragments, seemed deciddecidedly indifferent to our change in direction. I tried to tell myself that if Dan could absorb the idea of a whole new direction, I should be able able to to asaswell. well.I Idecided decidedtotoask askhim himabout aboutit.it. The opportunity came in an unexpected fashion. The next morning as I drove up the path to his house I noticed a thin haze of smoke lingering in the air. When I turned the corner
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into his yard I saw him standing in front of his stoop tending a small fire with a stick. He was chanting under his breath and throwing something onto the small patch of flames. I drove in cautiously, afraid that I might be interrupting some private ritual. But he grinned and beckoned me over with a hurried gesture. “Come on. Come on,” he said as I climbed out of the truck. A sweet fragrant odor came from the flames. “Here.” He reached into a small leather pouch he was holding and pulled out a pinch of something. “Put this on the fire.” “What is it?” I asked. “You’re too late for the pipe. I did that alone.” He sprinkled some more of the substance on the fire. The rich odor rose and filled the air. “It’s sweetgrass, Nerburn. You’ve heard of sweetgrass?” “Yes,” I answered, though I was not acquainted with the intimacies of its usage. “The Creator loves the smell of sweetgrass. If you smoke the pipe and pray and then put sweetgrass on the fire, he will listen to you.” I wanted to be involved, but I felt uncomfortable entering into his spiritual reality. “I’m doing this for you,” he said. “For me?” “Yeah. That you will write a good book.” Things started connecting in my mind. “What are you burning?” I asked, unsure if I wanted the answer. “All the stuff I wrote,” he said. Then he lifted a small chant into the air. “You mean all the notes in the shoe boxes?” “Yeah. I saved some of the good things from Ann Landers. But I burnt all my own stuff.” I thought he might be joking with me to see my response.
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But there was no twinkle, no nuanced pauses, in his manner. He was intent upon his mission. “Come on,” he said. “Here.” He sprinkled a little more sweetgrass on the fire and beckoned me to do the same. “You’re going to need the help, Nerburn. Come on.” I sprinkled the green leaves on the fire. The flames bit at them, then swallowed them into a haze of sweet smoke. Dan chanted a few more words. I felt a knot in the pit of my stomach. Those pages had been my book and that book had somehow been my hope. I stared into the fire, numbed, like someone whose house had just burned down. Dan was positively cheerful. “This is good,” he said. “Grover was right. This will be better.” I didn’t answer. What I saw in my mind’s eye was the loss of several months worth of work. And worse, the whole burden of the project now fell on me. Dan’s words no longer existed, except insofar as I could extract them from him and get them down in a meaningful fashion. Dan must have been following my thinking on his own. “It’s not the end of the world, Nerburn. You’re a good writer.” He sprinkled more sweetgrass on the fire. The wind blew the smoke around my legs like a playful kitten. “Here. Put some more on. We need to make a strong prayer.” Halfheartedly, I dropped more sweetgrass into the diminishing flames. Cheap metaphors of dying embers of hope filled my mind. “You’re thinking, not praying,” he said. He raised his voice in a lyrical, rhythmic chant. I stood silent, watching the crumpled edges of several stubborn pieces of paper as the flames crawled their way up and curled them into ash. I waited what I hoped was an appropriate time before speaking. “So what do we do now?” I asked. “Grover was right. It’s all inside of me. We’ll do it the
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Indian way. I’ll make talks and you watch and listen. Then you just write it down.” “Oh.” It didn’t seem that simple to me. But Dan was as lighthearted as a child. I had a sense of the burden those boxes must have been to him, filled with the best and deepest of his own thoughts, closeted away in a dark corner of his house from which they might never emerge except to be burned in an anonymous fire in the event that he died before finding a way to give them voice. Now he had burned them himself. Now I was the box. Now he was going to fill it again.
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